Mary?m – The Traditional Story
Mary (Aramaic: Mary?m, later Hebrew Miriam, Greek ?????? or ?????), called since medieval times Madonna (My Lady), was, according to Christian tradition, a Jewish resident of Nazareth in Galilee and known from the New Testament as the mother of Jesus of Nazareth. The New Testament describes her as a young maiden – traditionally, Greek parthénos signifies an actual virgin – who conceived by the agency of the Holy Spirit while she was already the betrothed wife of Joseph of the House of David and awaiting their imminent formal home-taking ceremony (i.e., the concluding Jewish wedding rite). According to Lumen gentium (the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 1962), promulgated by the Second Vatican Council, Mary both embodies and reflects the greatest doctrines of Christian faith. For most of the Christian era, divine maternity (as “mother of God”) has been the fundamental principle of Mariology, and everything that can be theologically predicated of Mary derives from that principle. The central issue today has shifted to discussion of her importance as an exemplar for all Christians.
The fact that Jesus was “born of a woman” (Gal. 4.4) was from the beginning the guarantee of his true humanity, a safeguard against docetism . Mary’s name probably appears in the creeds as a reminder of Christ’s humanity. But the scriptural fact of the virginal conception led to a glorification of Mary for qualities that set her apart from humanity rather than identifying her with it and has led to an extraordinary diversity of devotional practice and theological debate. Debate continues in the fields of exegesis and doctrine, and with the persistence of cultus at sites of Marian apparitions.
The specific biblical evidence about Mary is sparse. Only Matthew and Luke mention a virginal conception; only Luke (1–2) relates the early life of Jesus and makes Mary a central figure in the salvation story, giving us the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Magnificat, the Presentation in the Temple, and Simeon’s prophecy to Mary. The Visitation (of Mary to Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist) is a key moment in the development of Mary’s unique theological status. When Elizabeth addresses Mary as “mother of my Lord,” she may be ascribing a divine title to the child in Mary’s womb. There is a hint here of incarnational theology, which points the way to the Johannine prologue (Mary is not mentioned there, nor is she actually named in the Fourth Gospel). Luke uses the birth and childhood of Jesus to prefigure later events, but he gives no depiction of a full and unique personality for either Jesus or Mary. Mary’s response to the Annunciation is grammatically passive (“Let it be to me as you have said,” Luke 1.38). It has been interpreted as spiritually passive, too, with Mary the vessel of grace rather than an agent in the divine plan of salvation. According to both the Gospel genealogies, Joseph is of David’s line, and Jesus was assumed to be Joseph’s son (Luke 3.23). Davidic ancestry through a foster-father being inadequate for messianic purposes, a Davidic ancestry for Mary also developed later.
Her parents are not named in the canonical texts, but in apocryphal sources, widely accepted by later tradition, were Joachim and Anne. She was a relative of Elizabeth, wife of the priest Zechariah of the priestly division of Abijah, who herself was of the lineage of Aaron and so of the tribe of Levi. In spite of this, some speculate that Mary, like Joseph, to whom she was betrothed, was of the House of David and so of the tribe of Judah, and that the genealogy presented in Luke was hers, while Joseph’s is given in Matthew . She resided at Nazareth in Galilee, presumably with her parents, and during her betrothal – the first stage of a Jewish marriage – the angel Gabriel announced to her that she was to be the mother of the promised Messiah by conceiving him through the Holy Spirit. When Joseph was told of her conception in a dream by “an angel of the Lord”, he was surprised; but the angel told him to be unafraid and take her as his wife, which Joseph did, thereby formally completing the wedding rites. The gospels of Mark, John and the remainder of the New Testament do not explicitly mention the virgin birth.
Mary appears unnamed at the wedding in Ca’na and at the foot of the Cross (John 2.1–11; 19.26–27: she is simply “the mother of Jesus”). There is no indication in these appearances of a unique grace accruing to her as mother of the Messiah. Mary at the foot of the Cross became a significant moment in the crucifixion story and was interpreted as a type of Jesus leaving Christians in care of their mother the Church, but in other passages (Matt. 12.48–50; Luke 11.27–28) Jesus seems to deny that her status is unique. Revelation 12.1–6 is a source for Mary’s cultus as queen of heaven.
She came to be identified with the “woman clothed with the sun,” having the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars about her head. There is a web of allusion in this passage, but central is Genesis 3, for the woman (whether imaging Mary or faithful Israel) has reversed the serpent’s defeat of Eve. Her trampling of the serpent (sin) paves the way for a doctrine of Mary’s sinless conception. This is only one of a plethora of interpretations by which images of Mary were detected in the Hebrew Bible. There is MTo the personification of divine Wisdom (Prov. 8.22–36) and the woman of virtue (Prov. 31) must be added the bride in the Song of Songs, who is “black and comely” (1.5), a “locked garden,” a “sealed fountain” (4.12, evoking perpetual virginity), “altogether lovely and without blemish” (4.7, evoking Immaculate Conception). There is also the prophecy of a young woman in Isaiah 7.14, traditionally translated “behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son” (cf. Matt. 1.23). Since the angel Gabriel had told Mary (according to Luke) that Elizabeth, having previously been barren, was now miraculously pregnant, Mary hurried to visit Elizabeth, who was living with her husband Zechariah in a city of Judah “in the hill country”. Once Mary arrived at the house and greeted Elizabeth, Elizabeth proclaimed Mary as “the mother of [her] Lord”, and Mary recited a song of thanksgiving commonly known as the Magnificat from its first word in Latin. After three months, Mary returned to her house. According to the Gospel of Luke, a decree of the Roman emperor Augustus required that Joseph and his betrothed should proceed to Bethlehem for an enrollment, see Census of Quirinius. While they were there, Mary gave birth to Jesus; but because there was no place for them in the inn, she had to use a manger as a cradle.
After eight days, the boy was circumcised and named Jesus, in accordance with the instructions that the “angel of the Lord” had given to Joseph after the Annunciation to Mary. These customary ceremonies were followed by Jesus’ presentation to the Lord at the Temple in Jerusalem in accordance with the law for firstborn males, then the visit of the Magi, the family’s flight into Egypt, their return after the death of King Herod the Great about 2/1 BC and taking up residence in Nazareth. Mary apparently remained in Nazareth for some thirty four years. She is involved in the only event in Jesus’ adolescent life that is recorded in the New Testament: at the age of twelve Jesus, having become separated from his parents on their return journey from the Passover celebration in Jerusalem, was found among the teachers in the temple. Probably some time between this event and the opening of Jesus’ public ministry Mary was widowed, for Joseph is not mentioned again.
According to the apocryphal Gospel of James she was the daughter of Joachim and Anna. Before Mary’s conception, Anna had been barren, and her parents were quite old when she was conceived. They gave her to service as a consecrated virgin in the Temple in Jerusalem when she was three years old, much like Hannah took Samuel to the Tabernacle as recorded in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). According to tradition, Mary died while surrounded by the apostles (in either Jerusalem or Ephesus) between three and fifteen years after Christ’s ascension. When the apostles later opened her tomb they found it empty and concluded that she had been bodily assumed into Heaven. The House of the Virgin Mary near Ephesus, Turkey is believed by some to be the place where Mary lived until her assumption into Heaven. The Gospel of John states that Mary went to live with the Disciple whom Jesus loved (John 19:27), who is traditionally identified as John the Apostle. Irenaeus and Eusebius of Caesarea wrote in their histories that John went later to Ephesus , which may provide the basis for the early belief that Mary also lived in Ephesus with John. “Mary’s Tomb”, an empty tomb in Jerusalem, is attributed to Mary, but it was unknown until the 6th century.]
